Originally Posted By: tanstaafl.
I had a thought that perhaps it might be useful to see the netstat information while starting up WMP. So attached are a pair of files.

Yep, that is what I was looking for, sorry for not making that more clear earlier. Netstat is dumping a full list of all network connections it sees every second to that text file, and the goal is to see if Windows Media Player is creating any new network connections that are timing out. If the problem is network related, this will help narrow down what exactly on the network (or internet) that is delaying the first start. It could be an attempt to look for local devices to share music with, and a bad timeout there, or it's trying to talk to an internet server for some reason. Either case should be caught with the netstat.

I'll look into the file you posted soonish.